


Blackberry Jam

by compo67



Series: Punzel Verse [21]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Childhood, Established Relationship, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Implied Mpreg, Kid Fic, M/M, POV Child, Parenthood, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 00:58:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4120540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/compo67/pseuds/compo67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the age of five, children are extremely observant of the adults around them and their behaviors. Bailey is no exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blackberry Jam

Bailey watches his parents every morning.

He sits in his seat—the first kids’ seat at the table, because he is the oldest, thank you—and waits twice. Depending on the schedule set up by the adults, what he looks for happens at different times. Today, mommy and daddy are up first. Daddy came in and woke them all up, and mommy has been making yummy pancakes and crispy bacon. This is better than when Grandma Hannah makes pancakes. Bailey loves his Gram, but her pancakes always come out looking like black Frisbees.

While they wait for breakfast, daddy sits at the table with them, looking over important papers for work. There are all sorts of pictures of flowers on his papers, sort of like coloring books, but they’re filled in already and labeled with really long names.

“Ken wants me to get a degree in this stuff.”

“Oh? Where’d that come from?”

“I’d make more if I had a degree.”

“How’s that?”

“The grants that cover my salary, plus the private funding, would give us more money if I were listed as highly skilled.”

“You’re already highly skilled; you’ve been there since the beginning.”

Mommy and daddy talk back and forth between the kitchen and dining room all the time. Mimi and Papa do the same. Bailey enjoys the sounds of their voices all around him, familiar and safe. Sitting beside him, the girls are quiet today, which is unusual, so Bailey knows there must be something secret they’re plotting.  For the moment, his sisters are engrossed in their coloring books, presents from Auntie Rhonda. Bailey tried to color in his, but it’s filled with trucks and fire engines. Those are boring things to color. Trucks are red, blue, or black. Fire engines are red. He left his under his bed.

“Experience doesn’t count for everything,” daddy says, picking up his coffee mug. Mommy made the coffee for him this morning, and poured it into the mug shaped like a dinosaur. That was last year’s Father’s Day gift to daddy, a souvenir from their trip to San Francisco. Bailey wants to go back. Well, he never really wanted to leave.

Bailey knows that daddy drinks his coffee black. That means he doesn’t add any milk or sugar to it. He gave Bailey a sip once. It was the worst, grossest thing ever. Worse than the mud soup he made with Kaylee last summer because Mimi wouldn’t give them more chocolate ice cream after dinner.

But coffee seems to make daddy happy. He has one mug every morning.

From the kitchen, mommy picks up their conversation. Bailey can hear pancakes being turned over on the griddle.

“Is that something you wanna do, Jen?”

“What? Get a degree?”

“Yes.”

“I’d make more money. Who doesn’t wanna make more money?”

“That’s not my point,” mommy huffs, bringing over a large, orange plate stacked with fluffy pancakes. He puts the plate down in the center. “Money’s not everything.”

“It is when we’ll have four in those seats instead of three.”

Usually, mommy will serve from the big plate onto the small plates in front of them. He’ll plop down one pancake each, add one piece of bacon, and ask daddy to pour the syrup—except for Bailey. He prefers jam over syrup.

But now something different happens.

Mommy stands at the edge of the table with his hands on his hips, looking at daddy the way Mimi looked at Kaylee two days ago when she walked through the house with her rain boots on after jumping in puddles. Instead of Mimi chasing after Kaylee and having a talk, mommy puts his hand on daddy’s papers.

“That’s not fair, Jensen, not to me, but especially not to you. I’ve never asked you to do something you didn’t want to just to support us, and I’m not asking you now. Do it because you love it, otherwise, don’t do it at all.”

A second later, mommy starts serving.

“Kay, baby, get your fingers out of your mouth please. Hailey, scoot over so your sister has room to eat. And girls, please, no coloring books during breakfast, close ‘em up.” Three pancakes plop down onto three differently colored plates. Bailey’s is blue, but he’d rather have purple. Kaylee won’t trade. She never trades.

“Are you mad at me?”

“No.”

“Fine.”

“…”

“…”

“…ugh, yes, Jensen, I am mad at you. But I’m not having this conversation with an a-u-d-i-e-n-c-e. Did you put out Bailey’s jam?”

At the same time, hushed, the girls have their own top-secret meeting. Bailey only catches bits and pieces of it, but once they mention princesses, he tunes out of that talk and back into mommy and daddy’s.

“I forgot.”

“Can you get it… please.”

Daddy gets up from the table, running a hand through Bailey’s hair before he turns to go to the kitchen. Mommy says something about going to get the bacon and follows after daddy.

“Are you doing this because you want to or because you have to?”

“Thought you didn’t wanna talk right now.”

“If I don’t get you to talk some now you’ll clam up and it’ll be days before you say a peep. Not the strawberry.”

“What then?”

“Blackberry.”

“Oh.”

“I thought we were okay with money.”

“We are. Sorta.”

“Sorta?”

“We’re adding one more to an already tight budget, Tall Man, that doesn’t happen without something changing.”

“You think I don’t get that?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re fine.”

“Just… don’t use any of them as the reason for getting into something you’ll hate. You’ll resent them and me for it if you do.”

“What if… I don’t want to do it?”

“Then you don’t.”

“And money will rain from the sky?”

“I’ll go to school.”

“…you will?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“Catering. Tilly will have to pay me more. I’m bringing in three quarters of her pastry revenue. Imagine what I could do if we added professional catering instead of side-jobs here and there.”

“You been thinking on this?”

“For a while.”

“And you never said anything?”

“I wasn’t sure myself.”

“…I think you’d make a great caterer.”

Hailey breaks Bailey’s concentration. She calls out, “Mommy, where’s the bacon?”

“Duty calls.” A second later, mommy walks back into the dining room, carrying his own plate and a platter of bacon. He’s smiling this time. “Bay, honey, sit up.”

Everyone gets two pieces of bacon this morning.

Daddy sits back down at the table and reaches over to put jam on Bailey’s pancake. He makes a jam smiley face with a knife and nudges Bailey’s cheek. “There you go, big guy. Eat up, don’t let it get cold.”

All five of them are at the table. Mimi and Papa are both still asleep, but they’ll be up in a little bit to drive Bailey and his sisters to school. It’s also their turn to cook dinner tonight. Bailey hopes it’s spaghetti and meatballs.

The papers from before are swept away into a blue folder. Daddy then grabs his fork, ready to eat, but pauses, looking over at mommy.

“Jared, I want a degree.”

For a tiny second, mommy’s eyes lock with daddy’s. “Good.”

“So what do we do?”

“The same thing we do every night, Pinky.”

“Oh boy.”

“Take over the world, duh.”  

“Great.”

“Don’t look so mopey, Jen. The answer is obvious—we both go to school. These wonderful, beautiful, perfect little angels will be in school from seven to two, and after that we can ask the Grandmas to pitch in one more night a week. We could do it, Jen, listen to me. We’d just have to balance out our classes. I can get a certificate in two semesters if I start this summer.”

One eyebrow raised, daddy asks, “So you haven’t been thinking about this at all, huh?”

Mommy takes a sip of daddy’s coffee and smiles. “Nope, nuh-uh. Oh, Punzel, your coffee’s cold.”

“It’s okay.”

“What’s okay? This isn’t okay. The father of my children deserves hot coffee.”

Mommy gets up from the table faster than daddy can say anything else. He runs to the kitchen and comes back, fast as lightning. The dinosaur mug is now filled with fresh, hot coffee.

Taking it carefully, daddy looks into the mug, then back at mommy, who stands next to daddy’s chair.

“You’re okay with waiting for number four?”

“And five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.”

“…”

“We could use the hashtag: #JaredandJenplusTen.”

“Uh, no thank you.”

“Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“I think you’ll make a great professional gardener… landscape… flower person.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

“…coffee’s good today.”

“I know,” mommy says, leaning down, wrapping his arms around daddy’s shoulders. “I made it.”

Then it happens.

Mommy kisses daddy’s cheek.

Bailey feels safe all over again.

Except for the moment his sisters cackle and his chair tips back. Then, Bailey begins to panic. There’s no telling what diabolical scheme Hailey and Kaylee will execute while mommy and daddy aren’t looking. What horrors lie ahead at the hands of his sisters…

“Kay!” Hailey laughs, jumping up and down. “Attack!”

On his left, Hailey leans in. On his right, Kaylee leans in.

They both smack big, wet kisses on his cheek.

He isn’t the only one watching their parents.

To top it off, Kaylee drops a coloring book into Bailey’s lap. It opens to pictures of fire engines and trucks—newly colored bright pink, orange, yellow, green, and purple.

They made it better for him.

He never puts it under the bed again.

**Author's Note:**

> the idea for this entered my brain today and would not let me be, so i had to write it. this verse always gives me so many feels. let me know what you think, there's a lot going on here! :D


End file.
